Small business marketing integration and owned media.

Friday Curation –  at the risk of oversimplifying, paid media is advertising and sponsorships, while earned media is public relations and word-of-mouth. Companies either pay to deliver content to an audience or try to earn coverage and exposure from reporters and influencers.

B2B marketers benefit from guidance about where and how to invest.

In contrast, owned media is anything under companies’ direct control such as websites, newsletters, catalogs, and blogs.

Social media is usually treated as owned and earned. The rationale is that brands own their own social channels and audiences, then try to earn sharing and word-of-mouth. But don’t be fooled.

Social media is not owned media.

If social media were truly owned, brands would have control over the experience, access to their fans, and full use of the data. But the reality is quite different. Public social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter don’t enable brands to access their own data.

And Facebook now charges brands to reach their own fans and followers.

Most social media is rented, not owned. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are your landlords and you just lease the space. It’s true that you own your accounts and profiles. That’s like having your name on the mailbox. But as your landlord, they can enter your apartment at will, renovate the building whenever they like — and keep the profits resulting from improvements you make to the property.

Owned media strategies are particularly compelling for manufacturers who want to create direct relationships with customers. In the sporting goods industry, Nike has created the Nike+ running community while UnderArmour is developing an owned media strategy around its recent acquisition of MapMyFitness.

In the food and grocery segment, McCormick has created its FlavorPrint taste profiler while Kraft Foods has created an entire community around recipes as a social currency.

Owned media can be used in B2B as well. Each of these owned media strategies share some fundamental characteristics.

• First, they create value for people beyond the products being sold.
• Second, they use data not just as a way to target a message, but as a way to create a useful service.
• Third, they treat people not as a passive consumers but active co-creators. Whereas most media strategies are about push, these owned strategies are about pull.

Come back for upcoming posts on the details of content and media working together for small and middle-market business leaders and their marketing services teams.

We can keep you on this B2B marketing effectiveness and sustainability best practices path. Or get you on it if you are not there yet. We know where you want to go. We know the right buttons to push. We get you there with a real ROI.

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